Beauty may be the ultimate enigma: infinite, immeasurable and timeless. Often found in the darker reaches of pain and suffering, it is in life and death, in struggle and triumph. Beauty's one constant is its sphinx-like inscrutability; no two people will see it the same way or find it in the same place. Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but it is also something held deep within ourselves. Yet the fact that beauty cannot be defined has not stopped an industry from trying, not only in categorizing our differences but homogenizing them, too.

The cover story, photographed by Nicholas Alan Cope, highlights Patricia Black, a woman who is unapologetically herself in embracing these differences. A curator and 'stylist to the stylists', she is in many ways the consummate insider, yet she remembers the feeling of being on the outside looking in, of wanting, as she puts it, to 'belong in the room'. She has encouraged a much-needed realness in the industry, her dynamic energy a testament to a life lived true to herself. With this issue, we join Black in defining beauty on our own terms.